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Redondo’s Fox Theater

When the Fox Theater in Redondo Beach opened on Friday, Feb. 22, 1929, it was the premier movie showplace in the South Bay. Only San Pedro’s Warner Grand, opened in 1931, could rival its splendor. Built at an estimated cost of $300,000 at 103 W. Diamond Street, it had all concrete construction, a state-of-the-art sound and projection system and a large pipe organ.

The architect was John Paxton Perrine, who designed six other movie theaters in the Southern California area. The Fox Theater was built on the site of an earlier theater, the Art Theater, a Paramount theater which had been built in 1912 and torn down in 1928. Fox’s movie theater arm West Coast Theatres acquired the Art Theater in 1920.

The Fox Theater’s opening night was headlined by a showing of the new Fox film “The Ghost Talks,” starring actress Helen Twelvetrees, shown at left in a publicity photo. The comic farce was only the second talkie ever produced by Fox. It was well reviewed by the New York Times, but unfortunately is now considered lost, with no prints known to have survived.

Twelvetrees was in attendance at the Fox Theater screening of “The Ghost Talks,” which also included a second feature, a Fox Movietone newsreel, and five live vaudeville acts to round out the evening. In fact, the Fox was built to accommodate not only the screening of films, but also the staging of vaudeville shows.

The Fox Theater in Redondo Beach stands in isolation as the King Harbor redevelopment project goes on all around it in this March 31, 1961 Daily Breeze file photo. Walt Disney’s original “101 Dalmatians” is advertised on the marquee.

The sturdily built theater remained a moviegoing landmark for 44 years. When redevelopment came to the Redondo Beach harbor area with the construction of King Harbor in the early 1960s, the Fox Theater was one of the few structures to survive. Though built right on the ocean, it was strong enough to withstand the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake as well as the occasional violent storms that rocked the area.

In addition to showing films, it would occasionally host other events. One such instance came in 1965, when the Fox Theater presented a live rock ‘n’ roll concert featuring the Bobby Fuller Four. The El Paso group had relocated to Los Angeles, where it became popular in the city’s clubs. Its Redondo appearance came on the heels of its first big local hit, “Let Her Dance.” The group would later record an even bigger hit, “I Fought the Law.” Fuller’s career ended suddenly with his mysterious death on July 18, 1966. He was found dead in his car but how and why it happened still remains a mystery. He was 23. (Watch for Fuller expert Miriam Linna’s definitive biography of the rocker, “I Fought the Law, The Life and Strange Death of Bobby Fuller 1942-1966,” co-written with Fuller’s brother Randy and due out in Summer 2012.)

Redevelopment eventually did claim the Fox. One of its economic problems was lack of parking. Though it was built to accommodate both films and vaudeville acts, it was not built to accommodate automobile parking, and it became economically unfeasible to add it after the fact. The theater was purchased by the Redondo Redevelopment Agency for $201,000 in 1972, which planned to tear it down for new development.

A group of students from El Camino College staged a mini-protest before the Redondo Beach City Council the night before the Fox Theater showed its final feature on Dec. 5, 1972, but to no avail.

The theater wanted to get “The Last Picture Show” as its final feature, but it was unavailable, so they settled for a showing of “Woodstock.” Operating the curtain that night was J.E. (Jim) McGinnis, the same man who operated the projection booth on the theater’s opening night in 1929 when it showed “The Ghost Talks.”

The wrecking ball brings down the wall at the Fox Theater in Redondo Beach in this March 1973 file photo.

Demolition of the Fox Redondo began on Feb. 26, 1973. A hotel had been planned for the site when demolition was completed later that spring, but it never was built, and the site currently is a parking lot.

How I miss The Fox Redondo! It remains one of the dearly cherished, tenderly nostalgic memories of my “halcyon youth.” By the time I patronized that magnificent theatre, its glory days were long past. But even in the twilight of its existence, the FR still retained its regal majesty, a hallmark of awesome Fox movie palaces.

The movies I saw there were potboilers, “B” and “C” horror and fantasy movies such as “Bigfoot,” “Count Yorga, Vampire,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Valley of Gwangi.” But by dint of their exhibition at the FR, they became, for me, indelible cinema classics. I particularly remember longingly gazing at the marquee displaying “Frankenstein Created Woman” and “The Mummy’s Shroud” — a Hammer Horrors double-feature that I regrettably was denied the chance to see.

Had I possession of H.G. Wells’ desirable Time Machine, I would routinely use it to journey back in time to spend innumerable hours at the dearly beloved, late, lamented Fox Redondo.

Rita Loy

I remember going to so many movies at the Redondo Fox Theater I have lost count I saw top rated shows and I saw some that were real bombs. But hey where could you go and watch a movie for under $1. Going to the Fox Redondo while I was in Junior High School and my first first two years of High School was a weekly routine and I really missed going there the later part my Junior year of High School.